Friday, October 2, 2009

My Name is Sydney Bristow

For this post, I'm going to take a page out of the playbook of Our Nation's Great Modern Storyteller, JT LeRoy.

Whoops, scratch that, I mean J.J. Abrams. Easy mistake to make.

Anyway, like my man J.J., I'm going to start todays story in medias res (Latin for "without a clue") and then flash back to the beginning in a sloppy attempt to build tension and give the vague impression that I am slick and innovative. Note that this also happened on last week's episode of Mad Men, but that's allowed because Mad Men is cool. (I mean, have you seen those suits? Classic!)

INT. GUANGZHOU APARTMENT - MORNING

There's a strange Chinese man in our apartment, wearing the same clothes as he was wearing last night, squatting on our toilet, using my pocket kleenex for toilet paper.

SMASH CUT TO:

Opening titles. (Theme song from "Three's Company", shots of Gus, Jon, and some Chinese man we barely know.)

24 HOURS EARLIER:

So yesterday was National Day, and Gristle said that he wanted to go out to "celebrate." (This was actually almost certainly not why he wanted to go out, because the interesting thing about Gristle is that he is fairly openly and vocally anti-government. But that's a post for another day.) We decided to go to this little bar near our house that Gristle had taken Gus to before. The bar is called 水边吧, which means "Waterside Bar" but which is a pun on "随便吧", which means "Anything Goes" bar. And seriously, in that bar, anything goes. It was WILD. Just kidding, it was completely low key, and totally empty. Anything Goes, more like Nobody Goes, am I right??? Not even Kate Capshaw. (Man, that was a lame reference.) But despite being totally empty, it was pretty great. The soundtrack was Roy Orbison with a generous helping of Chinese folk music, so it was basically a David Lynch set piece. I loved it. And I am glad that we have finally found places to hang out which are not shitty discotheques.

Also they had a really expensive beer on the menu called 蓝带, which literally means Blue Strip and which Gus finally realized was Pabst Blue Ribbon. Let me say that again: 水边吧 sells PBR. For RMB 12 a can, which I guess is actually not that much. So I'll know where to go if any hipsters ever come to visit.

Anyway, Gus and Gristle and I hung out there for a few hours, and a few of Gristle's friends joined us after a while. They were super drunk because they had spent all night toasting each other with 白酒 (the most disgusting alcohol in the world). They came and we sat around for a while discussing two topics which I care deeply about: which parts of China have the prettiest women (Answer: Chengdu!) and whether or not American men care whether their wives are virgins (Answer: No!).

And then the drunkest of the bunch, who was more or less passing out on the couch in the bar, said that it was too late and he wouldn't be able to get back into his apartment, and then Gristle asked us if he (the guy) could stay in our guest room, and we said yes, so that's how we ended up with a strange Chinese man in our bathroom on a Friday morning.

BLACKOUT.

See, not that exciting, right? But I bet you thought it was going to be a great post after that opener, huh? On an unrelated note, Mission: Impossible III somehow made $398 million.